Buur Heybe, which translates to "The Hill of the Potter's Sand", is a late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological complex located in the largest granite inselberg in the inter-riverine region of the southern Bay province of Somalia approximately 180 km northwest of the capital Mogadishu. Buur Heybe has a longstanding history of archaeological research dating back to the 1930s when Paolo Graziosi carried out the first professional archaeological excavation in Somalia in the rock shelter site of Gogoshiis Qabe in Buur Heybe. Further excavations by J. Desmond Clark in the 1950s and later by the Buur Ecological and Archaeological Project (BEAP) led by Steven Brandt in the 1980s have made Buur Heybe one of the best-dated and closely studied archaeological sites in Somalia.

BEAP's 1983 and 1985 field seasons uncovered the skeletal remains of fourteen human individuals. Eleven virtually complete and articulated primary burials, one secondary burial, and two individuals represented solely by partial dentitions. These human remains represent the first Stone Age human remains from Somalia found in a primary context and the earliest evidence of mortuary practices in the Horn of Africa.

Within the human burials, BEAP found grave goods in the form of thirteen complete pairs of lesser kudu horn cores, and six complete single lesser kudu horn cores were also present. These grave goods represent the earliest chronometrically dated evidence from eastern Africa (and one of the earliest in Africa overall) for the intentional positioning of grave goods within a burial.

A recent study of sixteen new and seven recently published radiocarbon dates of faunal remains (ostrich eggshell) from the Guli Waabayo rock shelter in Buur Heybe has provided evidence of the continuous use of the site for over a ~30,000-year period that covers most of the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 2 (~29-14.5ka) and the MIS 1 African Humid Period ~14.5-6 ka.) Using Bayesian analysis to determine the separate phases of occupation at the rock shelter site, researchers were able to discover two major periods of site occupation that align with the lithic evidence and human remains.

These results are important because they provide a new chronological model for Guli Waabayo regarding the continuous occupation of the site. This evidence challenges previously help assumptions about the responses of hunter-gatherer groups to decreased rainfall and semi-arid climates during periods of major environmental changes.